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New trial sought for S.C. boy, 14, executed in 1944

New trial sought for S.C. boy, 14, executed in 1944

Associated Press photo provided by South Carolina Department of Archives and History -- An undated photo shows 14-year-old George Stinney Jr., the youngest person ever executed in South Carolina. Sixty-five years later, a community activist is fighting to clear Stinney's name, saying the young black boy couldn't have killed two white girls. George Frierson, a 56-year-old school board member and textile inspector, believes Stinney's confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s. Associated Press file photo -- In this June 8, 1944 copy of a photo from The Columbia Record, George Stinney, Jr., 14, center right, and Bruce Hamilton, 21, center left, both of Chicora, Ga. enter the death house in the state prison in Columbia, S.C. Both were executed in the state's electric chair on June 16, 1944.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A 14-year-old boy executed by South Carolina nearly 70 years ago is finally getting another day in court.

Supporters of George Stinney plan to argue Tuesday that there wasn’t enough evidence to find the black teen guilty in 1944 of killing two white girls, ages 7 and 11. They say deputies in segregated Clarendon County did little investigation after deciding Stinney was the prime suspect in the crime and coerced a confession from him.

The confession and the transcript of the one-day trial have disappeared.

The novel decision whether to give an executed man a new trial will be in the hands of Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen. Experts say it’s a longshot.

At 14, Stinney was the youngest person executed in the United States in the past 100 years.